Macie Stewart : When The Distance Is Blue

Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Macie Stewart has had a hand in quite a few amazing tracks over the last five years. Whether working with Makaya McCraven, Japanese Breakfast, Tweedy, Mannequin Pussy or SZA, Stewart adds her unique and singular musical voice to whatever she’s collaborating on. She mainly works with piano, prepared piano, violin, […]

Max Richter : In A Landscape

Sadly there are few modern classical composers that can sustain a career that isn’t buoyed by film, television, and video game score work. The late Johann Johannsson was working towards that. The great Hans Zimmer is another, but he first established himself in film work. Danny Elfman pretty much sticks to film and TV, besides […]

Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu, and Marta Sofia Honer : The Closest Thing To Silence

The best instrumental music takes you out of what you perceive to be your world and opens doors to new ones. It brings the curtain down on reality so that you can expand your mental and emotional horizons. Instrumental music doesn’t need words to guide you somewhere, as the composition built from instruments is the […]

zakè : Orchestral Tape Studies II

I’m always enthralled by the work of zakè. The ambient/new age composer has spent the last several years building a catalog of forward-thinking, thoughtful, and intellectual albums. Records that accumulate beautifully orchestrated sound collages and sonic realms that put you, the listener, in a state of contemplative and meditative bliss. Using electronics to create both […]

Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders : Promises

Promises is an album I never would’ve imagined to have been created, yet here I am talking about it. British producer Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, and experimental jazz legend Pharoah Sanders coming together to create a collaborative ambient album seems like something of a strange dream. But this is no dream. Shepherd wrote the […]

Camp Of Wolves : Granite Creek

The new album from David Salisbury’s electronic project Camp Of Wolves is heavy, man. Not in a d-tuned guitar and screamo vocals heavy, but the kind of heavy that hits you when you least expect it driving to work, or staring out at the sea. A monolithic melancholy that touches your cheek when some great […]

Get Lost In Ju4N’s Beautiful “Loops For MIDI Pt. 1”

Holodeck Records has put some excitement back into the lives of the music hungry. Something for us to look forward to on Fridays once again. For the past few weeks Holodeck Records has been dropping digital singles from some of the most forward-thinking electronic artists working today. This Friday is no different. Austin-based electronic composer […]

Ross McHenry : Nothing Remains Unchanged

There’s an unwavering complexity and intellectual depth to the new long player by Ross McHenry. The accomplished Australian jazz bassist, composer, producer, and bandleader has been making truly forward-thinking music in the jazz, electronic, and chamber music realm for a few years now. Each record sees McHenry reaching and expanding his music and sonic palate […]

Steve Reich : Pulse/Quartet

Steve Reich is the kind of musical figure that lives within several different worlds. He began in tape experimentations, looping, and sound phasing while making social and political statements in the mid-60s. His piece “Come Out” is a dizzying and hallucinogenic piece of sound manipulation that also served as a voice for the civil rights […]

Melody For A Dead Computer

I remember my first computer. It was a Little Professor calculator. It wasn’t your typical calculator, mind you. You see, instead of punching in a math problem and the happy Professor providing you with the answer, the Professor would provide a math problem and you would have to provide the answer. Kind of backwards, but […]